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The foul price of fame: how footballs hard men left a genius black and blue

George Best was a marked man in every way, the close  often illegal  attentions of defenders leaving him battered and bruised. This article by James Fox first appeared in The Sunday Times Magazine in 1968

GEORGE BEST is not usually quite so battered after a single Saturday of First Division football. These pictures show a composition of injuries spread over a number of games.

About half of them represent fouls — late tackles, stray elbows, bruises from the frenzied battering and buffeting he gets inside the penalty area, or direct kicks on the legs, usually well disguised as regular ball play. The rest are the physical dangers of being a great footballer.

The only way most defenders know how to stop him is to hit him hard. Best is too fast, too balanced to let anyone get close to him too often, and it is probably this speed and his inspired ability to ride dangerous tackles and slip out of threatening entanglements that keeps him intact to reappear Saturday after Saturday.

Best denies that tactics of deliberate violence are general in soccer. “With 22 fit men